Just stop this scum

Snooker is one of Britain’s national sports, a sort of working class croquet. Its most important tournament is the World Championship in Sheffield, currently under way.

Yesterday witnessed a ground-breaking event in the history of the game. Two Just Stop Oil vandals attacked the two tables in play.

One of them, a man, jumped on the baize and sprayed some orange goo all over it. Another, a woman, tried to superglue herself to the other table but was dragged off at the last moment. The game was disrupted, the enjoyment of the spectators, many of whom had travelled from afar at a considerable expense, was ruined.

I see this as a strong argument against university education. For both saboteurs boast academic credentials.

The orange man reads politics, philosophy and economics at Exeter University. It bills itself as “Probably, the best university in the world”, a slogan borrowed from Carlsberg lager (they say ‘beer’ instead of ‘university’ in case you’re wondering).

Considering that the fanatical thug is 25 years old, he is either a slow developer or a PhD candidate. In either case I wonder how they teach those subjects at Exeter.

Also, if that’s (probably) the best university in the world, I’m glad the chap doesn’t study politics, philosophy and economics at the worst one. Rather than spraying the snooker table with orange paint, he would (probably) have sprayed the audience with bullets.

The superglue babe is older, 52. She is identified as a ‘museum professional’, which can mean anything from floor sweeper to curator. I rather think it’s the latter: she expresses herself grammatically, which the English lower classes no longer do. The eternal student of English in me rejoices; the champion of our civilisation weeps.

After she was arrested, the superglue quinquagenarian said, eschewing contractions: “I did not take this action lightly, but I cannot remain a passive spectator while our government knowingly pushes us down a path to destruction.”

The orange philosopher added: “We’re facing mass starvation, billions of refugees and civilisational collapse if this continues.”

I agree with both of them: our government is indeed pushing us down a path to destruction and we are indeed facing civilisational collapse. But the problem isn’t the gas in our cookers and the petrol in our cars. It’s the scum like these two.

The world has suffered from many shortages throughout history, but hysterical antinomian malcontents have never been one of them. We’ve always had a nice, steady supply of those. But at different times different societies have treated such saboteurs differently.

Exactly what excites their passions is irrelevant. These people are possessed by an evil spirit, and such energumens wreak mayhem for its own sake. There is no reason for it, just a long menu of seemingly plausible pretexts.

It can be religion or atheism. Global warming or cooling. Militarism or pacifism. Black or white activism. Pro- or anti-immigration. Fascism or communism. Basically, show us a man, and the devil will find a cause.

The worst mistake in dealing with such zealots is engaging them in a sensible argument. That’s why I won’t cite heaps of evidence showing that global warming is a hoax, nor recommend books proving it with irrefutable science in hand.

I won’t even reference data showing that, since gas production and nuclear energy have been reduced or phased out, largely thanks to such zealots, Europe’s coal production has doubled. That replaces the cleanest energy with the dirtiest, but we shan’t get into this argument.

First, we’re never going to win it: diabolical passions won’t be quelled by facts and reason. Second, in the unlikely, nay impossible, event we do win it, they’ll just find another cause – there are plenty of those sloshing about in the world’s putrid swamps.

The problem is zealotry, not the pretext for it. And there I agree with the superglue babe: “our government knowingly pushes us down a path to destruction”. Yes it does – by being too lily-livered to stamp out scum like her once and for all.

I don’t mean troops should be brought in and the ‘fire at will’ order issued. Much as such a reaction may be aesthetically pleasing, most people will see it as incompatible with our core principles.

What the government should do is step up public education, teaching the people that none of the popular woke causes has any serious substance to it. Those who do vandalism or violence in their name aren’t ‘protesters’ but marginal loonies who should be isolated or at least ignored and ostracised.

If taken seriously, they multiply at a rate normally associated with bacteria only and become a deadly civilisational threat. They themselves are a much more serious problem than any they take as a call to disruptive action. If our society suffers from a disease, they are its most bothersome symptom.

And what does our government do? What do all Western governments do? They encourage wokery by teaching subversive nonsense at schools and universities, bowdlerising great literature, spreading evil propaganda through the media and adopting a laissez-faire attitude to politically inspired criminal acts.

Has a single education minister ever withdrawn government funding from any university that allows its Red Guards to ‘cancel’ conservative thinkers? Has any official ever pointed out that only events can be cancelled, and cancelling people is creepy?

I said earlier that we shouldn’t argue with energumens. The only such argument that has every worked for me consists of two words, of which the second one is ‘off’. But the general public is a different matter – it can be educated.

A massive public education campaign sustained for a couple of years could push the fanatics not just to the margins, but off the page. But that’s a pipe dream: one side of the Parliament aisle is inhabited by former activists in various subversive causes, and ‘former’ is too kind.

Is there a single MP on the Labour benches who doesn’t think ‘protesters’ have a point, even if they go about it with too much gusto? More important, is there anybody on the Tory benches who shares my views? There are some – but they are greatly outnumbered.

If a Tory minister with prime-ministerial ambitions says “trans women are women”, then that minister isn’t going to step hard on trans activists, is she? (It’s Penny ‘Thunder Thighs’ Mordaunt I’m talking about.)

And if cabinet members refuse to say publicly that the evidence against global warming is much stronger than that for it, then the vandals, motorway blockers and – as history shows – eventually mass murderers will crawl out of the woodwork.

When scum rises to the top, it should be skimmed off. Alas, I can’t see a single force that can do the skimming.

All we can do is keep explaining the facts of life to every normal person who’ll listen, ‘normal’ being the operative word. We may not save our civilisation, but there’s an outside chance we may save our own souls.